The worst lies in Cody Rhodes losing to R-Truth in like a minute and a half, but the Best lies in Big Show using a video package of himself distracting Cody Rhodes with footage of his humiliation and causing Cody to lose a match, effectively distracting Cody and causing him to lose a match. I’m afraid to say he Inception‘d Cody, but I hope next week’s show features Show distracting Cody with a video of him distracting Cody with a video of him distracting Cody, and when Cody loses in the innermost package they cut to him losing in last week’s package and then to him losing in the current week.

Keep this going for a month until we’re watching a video package of a video package of a video package of a video package, and Cody Rhodes is battling CIA agents on snowmobiles and the Cody/Kofi Kingston match on the current Raw takes two weeks to finish.

Worst: The Three Stooges

where’s that video of the monkey peeing in its own mouth when you need it

Best: Lord Tensai Isn’t Racist If You’re Paying Attention

Okay, so, a very important part of Raw I haven’t gotten the chance to write about yet.

There are two major points to make regarding Lord Tensai, the first of which is that yes, Lord Tensai is Albert. Prince Albert, that horrible hoss with the thumb head who got “shave your back” chants because his torso was an Ed Wood fever dream. “Albert” was/is not especially good. Your best memories of him should be the time Val Venis tattooed “VV” on his butt cheek and that he was named after a dick ring.

The thing to remember about Albert is that while he was bad for about 80% of his run, he pulled that Chris Masters thing near the end and started to get really good. He got cut and went to All Japan and then New Japan Pro Wrestling to become GIANT BERNARD, a guy who looked like Albert but he had a descriptive dog’s name, named his tag teams like they were Linda Fiorentino movies (BAD INTENTIONS) and was exceptional at that big clubbering fat guy kind of wrestling. So while he’s truly Albert, you have to remember that wrestlers aren’t always the exact same guy and can get better or worse with time or training.

The other thing is that Lord Tensai is NOT A RACIST THING. This is coming from the guy who thinks EVERYTHING is the racist thing. If you listen to the announcers, they make it very clear that Tensai is a former WWE superstar (acknowledging Albert without yelling ALBERT every time he appears) who went to Japan and saw a ton of success, so he wrote threatening words toward the Japanese on his face (because that’s who he was always facing) and came to be worshipped by some of the Japanese fans, hence his acolyte butler guy. And this week they made it even MORE clear by addressing how Yoshi Tatsu said Tensai wasn’t “real Japanese” by clarfying that he totally is not Japanese, he’s just from Japanese wrestling. Don’t know why Yoshi didn’t speak up when Yokozuna went into the Hall of Fame, but whatever.

So yeah, calling him “Matt Bloom” once would probably remedy these problems, but I reserve the right to defend Lord Tensai’s Japan-themed existence until he starts banging people over the head with gongs or tells Miss Go-rightry that he must protest, whichever comes first.

(note: one of them will come first)

Worst: Albert Chants, Or “Can We Just Go Back To Miami”

Miami’s “thanks for shaving” chant at Lord Tensai was as great as Washington’s “Albert” chants were bad.

Maybe I’ve been on the Internet too long and divorced myself from the abusive marriage to dirt sheetz too many years ago, but nothing screams “I am the bad kind of wrestling fan” like chuckling to yourself and sharing basic wrestling information you just figured out. “HEH, IS THAT ALBERT?” Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that the dude was Albert.

Best: SPIT HAND Is My New Favorite Move

The one thing I hope we can all agree on is the greatness of Lord Tensai’s devastating SPIT HAND, or, as Wikipedia calls it

Clawhold to an opponent’s face, knocking them out in the process, with theatrics[42] (2012–present)

This is the kind of thing I would’ve went nuts over as a kid. I remember having at least five years of wrestling conversation with people about the different colors of the Great Muta’s mist, and how one color blinded you and one color burned, and how if you got the black mist you died seven days later or whatever.

As an adult, I’m okay with the explanation that he’s just spitting onto his hand and rubbing it in your face as an insult, like he’s the pro wrestling Wayne Arnold or whatever, but the kid in me is all HE’S SPITTING ACID ONTO HIS HAND, AND THEN HE CLAWS YOU AND IT BURNS YOUR FACE AND IT DOESN’T BURN HIM BECAUSE HE MADE THE ACID WITH HIS GLANDS SO HIS SKIN IS INVULNERABLE TO IT or something, or maybe it has to do with his tattoos, or it’s ORIENTAL MAGIC.

Kid me was super racist, but bear with me.

Maybe it’s the same thing Rock does when he throws some punches, steps back, spits on his open hand and hits you one last time and it hurts WAY MORE than the others and you go flying. Spit has been shown to temporarily paralyze pro wrestlers (anybody who has ever been spit at stands there contemplating it and holding their face for a minute, so there is precedent) so maybe Albert went to Japan and learned how to not swallow when he wrestled so by the end of his match his mouth would be full, like he’s storing it up.

What I’m getting at is that the Spit Hand is awesome, at least ten times better than a Glovemouth and at least 100 times more interesting to talk about than Alex Riley.

Never understood when wrestlers run out like that to break up a fight. “Oh my god! They might hurt each other! WE MUST STOP THIS COLLECTIVELY!” Imagine this happened every time HHH grabs the sledgehammer and he’s gang banged by 30 superstars before he even looks up.

I was a little concerned that not all of the talent ran to their respective heel/face corners to hold back “their guy”. Is there not a diagram of this in the back next to the building evacuation procedures? Then again, I was secretly hoping it was just a way for ADR and Swaggler to punch Cena in the head a bunch of times unnoticed.

Just looked it up on Youtube, looks like Cross Rhodes, which I will gladly take!
Cole: “Vintage Plus Rhodes by Alopezb5, (wrestling name pending), now he’s setting Hornswoggle up for the Vegas Cloverleaf. SWOGGLE HAS NO CHOICE BUT TO TAP!”

““Albert” was/is not especially good.”….I’m so glad you went on to talk about A-Train at the end of his first run/Giant Bernard and how wrestlers can get better and worse over time because I was about to KICK OFF.

Great article by the way. The various descriptions of who Brock Lesnar is are amazing.

I remember when Starbucks had to change their original logo, which was the same mermaid-ish thing but scaled back so you could see it spread-eagle with its fish legs. Then people complained about its non-existent genitals…which makes me wonder why anyone would think about going balls deep inside the invisible fish coochie of the Starbucks logo.

In the third grade, I remember doing a crude drawing of an Iguanodon performing Sub Zero’s spine rip fatality on another dinosaur WITH HIS MOUTH. I didn’t know that the Iguanodon was a herbivore, and I surely didn’t know that depicting Dinosaur Mortal Kombat with colored pencils was looked down upon.

Random dinosaur anecdote aside, I missed this Raw due to family being in town. And even though this seemed to be a “bad” show, still kinda bummed that I missed it. Looks like the Punk/Jericho thing is getting interesting.

Johnny totally blowing off Eve made the entire night for me. Just slayed me.

Said it in the thread and I’ll say it again: with you 100% on the Albert chants. It’s one thing to decide to do the “Yes!” chants as a way to say “We like this guy whether you want us to or not.” It’s totally different to actively try and ruin a part of the show with chants. We get it, he’s Albert. And Kane was a dentist and Josh Matthews was on Tough Enough. Curtain. Pulled.

Also, I’m going to be at Raw when it’s here in Pittsburgh in a month or so, I’d be happy to contribute a page.

Is the Tensai/Albert and Ryback/Sheffield thing fairly recent, or have I just not noticed when WWE acknowledges that some wrestlers have been here before? I know they haven’t used any names, but was R-Truth ‘exposed’ as the former K-Kwik when he returned, or is it just like “Oh, here’s this guy, he’s brand new”?

I suppose I should admit that I actively don’t care that Matt Bloom is back in the WWE before I start here but here is the problem with your Lord Tensai isn’t racist thesis.

The WWE does not have a particularly great history in treating their ACTUAL wrestlers of Asian descent with dignity or even giving them a character beyond Evil Asian Stereotype X and Wacky Asian Stereotype Y. So having a white guy come in, get a prime spot and essentially steal all of the standard “Japanese wrester” characteristics (even if they insert the knowing wink where they acknowledge he’s actually a white guy) seems completely in sync with the standard WWE brand racism that’s been going on with this company for 50 years. All I can see when I see this character is the implicit “Dances with Wolves” narrative bullshit where a white guy goes to a foreign land masters all of the foreign secrets and becomes a better samurai than all of the Na’vi because he’s a white guy and thus better. It sucks and I don’t want it on my screen.

I mean if they went out and got Takeshi Morishima to be Evil Giant Tatooed Samurai guy, it still be annoyingly racist but at least, it would another minority getting a prime spot on a national television show.

Hahahaha, yeah sorry about that dude that was completely a dick move on my part. My apologies. The minute I said that you followed it with like 5 or 6 witty/interesting comments and I felt like a huge asshole.

I agree. The Lord Tensai gimmick is full-on cultural appropriation, and while it may be with the best of intentions (if we’re to believe the story about Matt Bloom discovering himself in Japan and immersing himself in its culture, thereby making this gimmick more of an homage), it’s still rooted in racism.

While the Stooges are a deserved WORST, does anyone know how those movie plugs work? You know their studio paid serious money to get the time on the show. Is it for a set amount of time? A number of appearances throughout the show? I’m just curious because based on whatever the deal has to be, maybe that was actually the best anyone could have hoped for. Otherwise, they probably would have buried it and just kept the studio’s money, right?

My original thought was that part of WWE and NBC Universal’s deal is that they have to plug a certain amount of company movies per year. But it looks like 20th century fox is releasing 3 stooges, so I’m guessing it is a paid sponsorship thing? In sales job where I’ve sold advertisements, we’ve had various levels of sponsorship’s, depending on what you put in, you could get various amounts of visibility.

I think a lot of this cross promo (which I almost went on a rant about during the WM thread) is all NBCU synergy. I’ve been ranting a lot at work and in general about how much better NBC is at it than everyone else – like WWE people on Fallon and Leno, Voice people record a duet (Moves Like Jagger) that happens to be on a Universal label, and so on. I didn’t look into it, but I’m pretty sure Flo Rida and MGK are likely signed to Uni labels (even if Uni Music isn’t part of the conglomerate). In this case tho, RonSwanson has to be right on the paid sponsorship thing. The distributor is Fox and the Farrellys seem to have a deal with Fox. WWE must have gotten a lot to structure a show around the movie, and the target demo must be their viewers.

Re: Lord Tensai: I don’t know, I’m not buying him. I feel like he should be “grizzled vet who made a name for himself in Japan and learned a lot because japan is vicious” but instead he’s “The Sultan”. I mean, does he have to yell Ichi Ban Tensai! Is that the ONLY Japanese he learned after like 8 years of being over there? Ichiban?

I think there’s a line, and it might be thin, to wanting to see wrestling and being into the stories versus wanting to see blood and violence. I’m also not a UFC guy, so maybe this is a needlessly thin line that only makes sense to me.

As much as all the Three Stooges stuff was pretty awful, I do have to give a BEST for the WWE’s fantastic continuity (and credit to DocZeus for pointing this out last night) of Kane HATING shitty celebrity guest stars and demonstrating such with CHOKESLAMS. I didn’t actually enjoy the segment, but just the idea of that being one of Kane’s driving forces as a “character” was maybe my favorite moment of the night.

Also, Camacho explaining Hunger Games had me laughing for a solid ten minutes, well done as always Brandon.

If there was a chance that my Pontiac POS could handle the 2500 miles and 24 hour round-trip (and not fall apart a la the Bluesmobile somewhere in Tennessee), I would be at your live riffing of Raw, Brandon.

Oh, and THESTINGER, my vote is for either Raw Group Therapy or Team Alpha Super Awesome Cool Dynamite Wolf Squadron.

I’m torn on the Albert chants. I understand it’s sort of a dick thing to do; and the fans were just doing it to demonstrate that they know who the guy used to be, and they remember that he sucked.

But is it *that* much different than last week’s “YES!” chants? Those chants weren’t so much in favor of Bryan as they were *protesting* Bryan’s treatment the night before… right? Drowning out Sheamus & Alberto with “YES!” chants is kind of dickish too. We just don’t see it that way, because we all like Bryan.

…I’m not saying last night’s crowd gave it that kind of thought. They were just being dickish “smart” fans. But if I had been in that crowd, I probably would have been chanting “Albert” too. But for the right reasons– to make fun of this guy I never cared about, AND to protest the fact that *he* gets to wrestle on TV while other, more deserving guys, don’t. It’s just another way of saying “Don’t tell me what to care about, WWE.”

The YES! chants were protests against being screwed out of seeing Daniel Bryan wrestle at WrestleMania for the second year in a row. If anything, its a nice reminder to the Powers that Be that its never smart to piss off the fans.

I want a celebrity match between Allison Brie and AJ. With Kate Upton referreeing. And the winner gets to fly around the world with me on my new jetpack that is fueled by the smiles of children! YES! YES! YES!

Good stuff, Brandon. You found the words that I couldn’t to describe why I think Brock is great. I’m all for the Incredible fucking Hulk kicking people in the dick instead of smashing them just because he thinks it’s funny.

Disagreed with a lot being said here as I was bored to fucking tears by this show last night. I thought the Cena and Lesnar brawl was pretty much the only redeeming of the whole show. But, hey, you know opinions and shit. Enjoyed the column all the same. Also, best and worst of Old School Smackdown? A possible Dean Ambrose debut may happen tonight.

I felt absolutely terrible after about the 10:20 mark in last night’s show. Today, after reading this, you’ve put things in some perspective for me and I feel 90% less terrible about wrestling. Thanks for being the leader of this group therapy session, B. With Leather and all the goodly people o’ open thread land keep me from giving up.

I was a kid so I can’t remember the name, but it was an outdoor arena with a tunnel leading to the back (I remember that because we were right at the mouth of the tunnel and I slapped Sting’s back! STING! I had a rat tail and an earring. I was a badass 8 year old).

I see what you mean about Tensai, Brandon, and I think it’s cool that they’re mentioning his past run and explaining his current character. It’s pretty rare and I fully expected them to just shove him out there and expect no one to remember he used to be the fat guy with the hairy back. HOWEVER, for the past year Mark Henry is putting on a goddamn UNSTOPPABLE MONSTER clinic and Tensai’s shit pales in comparison so far. If it’s not done right, they’re just fat, slow and boring. I hope they have some solid plans because I’m not sure he’s getting over on his own.

I appreciate the dinosaur references too, but Lawler didn’t do his research well enough. “Brontosaurus” is nomenclaturally inaccurate; “apatosaurus”, please.

Can’t believe you haven’t mentioned the new Del Rio shirt, which features his profile on what looks like a Roman aureus. You should buy it for Destiny so that it looks like she has the most bad-ass personalized softball jersey in history.

Okay, so, Brodus at Wrestlemania. At first, when his “momma” came out and it was clearly a young African-American lady in a frumpy sundress with a butt prosthetic, I thought, “Well, this is really dumb and kind of racist.” But then her “bridge club” came out and I stopped hating it out of sheer confusion. Everybody was dressed like his momma — same dress, same aged hairstyle, same artificially large ass. Is Brodus’s mother important enough to be a trend-setter among her peer group? How did they all know the same dance? I’ve set up brunch for a bridge club before, and all they did was play bridge and gossip, not rehearse group dance numbers should they gain the opportunity to dance on pay-per-view in Miami. It became so absurd and so inexplicable that I can’t hate it as much as I’d like to. When WWE does lowest-common denominator humor, it sucks out loud, so if they’re going for a “funny” segment, I’d rather they go all out and produce something that looks like an Andy Warhol fever dream.

On a related note, seeing that image of a bloody Cena, I really hope they let Johnny Curtis eventually start doing his idiom-explained-literally schtick again once he’s done chloroforming passers-by backstage.

In all fairness, the DC area (which I am including this in) is notorious for pretty much doing whatever the WWE wants them to. Go back and watch last night’s show. Their reaction to Brock is “Well, we know this guy, and he’s a big deal, but isn’t he the bad guy?”, and then they lose their shit for Cena.

I discovered Ryback for the first time Friday. It took me a second to realize that the hulking steroid freak was the former Skip Sheffield. I heard he had put on some extra muscle, but he ballooned up incredibly creepily. Look, I know that probably 85% of these guys are juiced, but must they be so obvious?

I’m just really tired of the Punk/Jericho angle. Their execution of the angle is what it is (meaning it’s not terrible), but the angle itself….ehhh. I just don’t get why this is a big deal.

I mean, I know Punk has made chicken salad out of his straight edge stuff his entire career, but there’s one key ingredient missing: the fact that alcoholism isn’t entertaining. His past stuff has always centered on the simplicity of “I’m pure” and/or “I’m better than you.” They probably thought Jericho bringing up the whole father side of it would be edgy, but it’s not even entertaining anymore.

Bryan is doing a great job with this storyline but this storyline blows. The WWE is too brain dead to capitalize on his instant popularity but they’re more interested in jobbing him out to a giant ginger asshole.

I can’t even express how much I wish this story would end with AJ helping Bryan cheat to win at the PPV, in an attempt to get back into his good graces. …And succeeding, of course, because I want them to be a couple.

It was just odd for him to rail against social media, only to have his twitter handle pop up under his name. It’d be like Punk speaking about being straight edge only to have a beer ad pop up on screen.

I mean, it did look like his typical ground and pound flurries, where he doesn’t posture up to get more distance and generate more force on his punches. Not that he needs to, he’s got cinder block fists, so his tiny little hammer-fist punches can still wreck fools.

I misheard Johnny at the beginning of the show. I’ve been under the impression that Sheamus was being forced to wrestle Mean Gene in the main event. I was looking forward to violence against the elderly.

BREAKING NEWS: Randy Orton and Cowboy Bob Orton have been downgraded. After a traumatic turn for the worst, the Local Medical Facility pronounced them to be Zack Ryder and Zack Ryder’s Dad, respectively. They remain in (are you) serious (bro) condition.

I thought Raw was OK. I felt most of the segments went on 2 or 3 minutes longer than they needed. B Stro, I hope you’re right and Henry becomes the Transitional champion. He’s such a good angry black man (which is funny, because I hear he is a teddy bear in real life). Actually, I think Washington would be wasted on Henry. Henry can work the mic enough to have the people buy into what he’s saying.

I’m also giving a worse to McMahon and/HHH for their shitty booking. Who ever thought it’d be a great idea to follow up last weeks raw with the Three stooges impersonators should get shit canned/lose the rights to run the company. Terrible decision.

A huge worst: They said Punk’s title is the most prestigious title in the world. It’s not the first time they said this statement. They essentially are killing Sheamus’ title’s significance. If that’s not bad enough, the WWE has done a wonderful job of minimizing Punk’s importance by having him not be in the last match of a PPV card (which wil happen at extreme rules). So, is there any point to have a title belt anymore?

Has there ever been a black WWE World Champion? Will Henry be the first? I kind of hope he wins it and can hold on to it for a while; if he is the first (even if it’s first in a long time), I’d like to see a solid reign and not end it quickly within a few weeks.

1 Lord Tensai sucked then and sucks now. Even if he did dominate is totes awesome Japan. I get that the only thing important in Japan is “fighting spirit” or whatever but here you should at least be able to talk a little. They even gave him a little silent Japanese man. HOW entertaining! 2 Smackdown was really bad. Ryback’s insane smasher “FEED. ME. MORE!” was nice though

Didn’t get to watch SmackDown last night, and since the thread appears to have gone that way, I figured this is a good place to ask:

The SmackDown open thread on Fark said that it was painfully obvious at points that “YES” chants (as well as “SI” chants) were getting muted or something played over top of them, and that the same was true for “DANIEL BRYAN” chants.

I’m sorry maybe I missed it, but it seems that you’re ignoring that Brock Lesnar is getting titty fucked by a sword tatoo. How do you write a paragraph about how much of an asshole he is but leave that out?

You know what? I’m probably one of few internet-savy fans who’ll say this, but I can’t cheer heels. If I find something deplorable in real life, I can’t root for a fictional character to do such a thing even in a fictional setting. I can recognize that they’re good at what they’re doing, and I can claim them as being high on my favorite wrestlers list(s), but I can’t applaud what their characters’ actions.

Similarly, I recognize Heath Ledger as a great actor when he plays the Joker, but I can’t cheer for the Joker blowing up a hospital. I consider the character of Adrian Veidt a well-written one, but I can’t applaud his killing of a million people with a giant, psychic, mutated squid thing. Okay, I guess that example’s a little more ambiguous, but still.

Did anyone make a Will Sasso wrestling in WCW because he and Bret Hart got into a totally for reals fight on Mad TV, and then his cast member hit him with a chair and started shouting “That’s right I sold out!” for no reason reference?